We were just blessed with a couple of breezy, low-humidity days, lack of nearby mountain peaks notwithstanding. Still a bit to go until August, but the annual cicadas around here are well into Their Summer Noise Thing, and the sound called to mind this bit from Works and Days:
When the thistle blooms and the chirping cicada
sits on trees and pours down shrill song
from frenziedly quivering wings in the toilsome summer,
then goats are fatter than ever and wine is at its best;
women’s lust knows no bounds and men are all dried up,
because the dog star parches their heads and knees
and the heat sears their skin. Then, ah then,
I wish you a shady ledge and your choice wine,
bread baked in the dusk and mid-August’s goat milk
and meat from a free-roving heifer that has never calved -
and from firstling kids. Drink sparkling wine,
sitting in the shade with your appetite sated,
and face Zephyr’s breeze as it blows from mountain peaks.